topic Re: need help adding a second node for CDOT 8.3 sim on VMware Fusion in Simulator Discussions

need help adding a second node for CDOT 8.3 sim on VMware Fusion

jgallagh — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 04:28:24 GMT

Hi all,

Just looking for some help setting up the second CDOT node on my Macbook. I'm on page 33 in the Simulate ONTAP 8.3 Installation and Setup Guide where I need to configure the serial number and system ID for the second node. I unpacked another sim folder from the same bundle and added a "node2" suffix to the resulting parent folder of the expanded sim files. Then looked at the Hardware tab of the VM (settings), clicked on the serial port and had no option to do the following:

===========except=====

Under the Hardware tab, select the Serial Port device and rename the Use named pipe to \\.\pipe\vsim-cm-N2-cons

(vsim-cm-N2 is the name of the simulator folder)
===========except=====

It's not clear where to add that entry. I seen some youtube videos for Workstation and the vSphere Client for ESXi, but there is no field to enter this named pipe text.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Jay

Re: need help adding a second node for CDOT 8.3 sim on VMware Fusion

jussij — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 05:36:36 GMT

That works only with workstation. You do not need that to get it up and running. So just skip the whole serial stuff.

Re: need help adding a second node for CDOT 8.3 sim on VMware Fusion

aborzenkov — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 05:42:29 GMT

Google search for "vmware fusion serial port" brings quite a lot of hits (including VMware documentation 🙂 ) like

Serial Port to Named Pipe in VMware Fusion

- or -

Accessing to VM via serial console at VMware Fusion 5

the latter is even for *BSD 🙂

Re: need help adding a second node for CDOT 8.3 sim on VMware Fusion

jgallagh — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 10:38:56 GMT

Thank you. That whole named pipe thing should have a footnote on it stating not worry if using Fusion. I thought it was needed to trigger the VLOADER prompt required to change the serial #/system ID.

Re: need help adding a second node for CDOT 8.3 sim on VMware Fusion

jgallagh — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 10:48:22 GMT

Trust me, I Googled 🙂 I grew up on Unix and used to get man pages printed out and smashed against my face if my questions were answered in them lol (along with screaming RTFM :). I guess I didn't use the right search strings, kept searching on "VMware Fusion" and "\pipe" Simulator, things like that.

Thanks again, I'm surprised how quickly the responses came through!

Re: need help adding a second node for CDOT 8.3 sim on VMware Fusion

shatfield — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 20:24:46 GMT

Serial over Network is possible for Fusion. Its not in the GUI, so you have to edit the .vmx after import.

serial0.present = "TRUE"
serial0.fileType = "network"
serial0.fileName = "telnet://0.0.0.0:2300"
serial0.network.endPoint = "server"
serial0.startConnected = "TRUE"

Then telnet local host on port 2300.